Working as language tutor at the ECO Café.

If you go on to Otemon’s website, you might discover that they have something called the ECO Café .  At the beginning of the semester, all of the students, including those students whose native language wasn’t English, were offered the opportunity to become an ECO tutor (or ECO facilitator as they liked to call it).  Of the 5 international students that joined for this semester, only me and one other person decided to do it.

Anyways, for those of you end up going to Otemon Gakuin, they will send you an extra form that you have to fill out and submit when you arrive at the airport.  If you’re unsure whether you want to work at Otemon Gakuin part time, I recommend you just fill out the form anyways: you can always change your mind, and it’s far more troublesome to submit the paperwork for part-time work after you arrive.

First of all, I want to start off by saying that you shouldn’t expect this part-time job to cover your living expenses while in Japan.  You will be paid 910 yen per hour, and will probably end up doing around 2 to 3 chat sessions per week.  Since each chat session is about 30 minutes long, you’ll probably end up making max 1390 yen per week, and there’s also tax that needs to be paid in addition to that…  hardly enough to cover all of your miscellaneous expenses.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to have a little bit of cash every week, and the job can blend in perfectly with your schedule since it usually takes place during lunch hour.  You can also do additional sessions during your spares, so it won’t take time away from your studies.  The ECO team is also quite accommodating too: as long as you let them know in advance that you can’t make it for a session, they can find someone to cover for you in the case that you’re sick and have other plans.

I also find the easy chat sessions to be quite enjoyable.  While it can be challenging to get Japanese students to utter more than one-word answers to the questions, it’s also quite rewarding to watch them grow as second language learners.  It’s also been interesting to see the different approaches that the ECO café uses to help facilitate conversation, and I even found myself learning things about Japanese culture that I wouldn’t have normally asked in a regular conversation.

Furthermore, I also found the staff to be highly supportive: they are always willing to answer any questions or concerns I might have about the job, and open to any ideas or suggestions I might have about events to host at the café or other ways to facilitate conversation.  Two girls from Germany, in fact, hosted 2 lovely workshops about German language and culture.  I had hoped to do some workshop or another about Canada as well, but couldn’t find access to an oven.  Apparently 4 Canadians will be coming to the program next semester.  Hopefully they will be able to come up with something clever *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*